Dozens of masked federal agents descended on the Japanese American National Museum’s (JANM) plaza in Los Angeles on Thursday, August 14, as California Governor Gavin Newsom conducted a press conference about congressional redistricting inside.
A spokesperson for JANM told Hyperallergic that approximately 75 United States Customs and Border Patrol agents showed up to the institution’s Norman Y. Mineta Democracy Plaza, which is publicly accessible.
“We are outraged and deeply distressed that armed federal agents came onto our campus — making arrests on the very ground where, in 1942, Japanese American families were forced to board buses bound for concentration camps,” JANM President and CEO Ann Burroughs said in the statement, shared with Hyperallergic.
“The parallels are stark: entire communities were forcibly removed from the West Coast in 1942 and today our immigrant brothers and sisters face the terror of ICE and CBP raids across the country. It was a miscarriage of justice then, and it is a miscarriage of justice now,” Burroughs continued.
The JANM spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the museum would continue to follow the law and its existing policies, including “requiring a judicial warrant to access private spaces” if any further operations occurred.
The museum added that one passerby was arrested during the operations. US Customs and Border Patrol declined to answer Hyperallergic‘s questions about the reason for the agents’ presence or how many individuals were arrested. The representative referred Hyperallergic to an X post by Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denying that the operations had anything to do with Newsom.
“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law,” McLaughlin wrote, replying to a video of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass positing that the agents were there as an act of political intimidation at the highly-publicized event.
Inside the museum’s Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, Governor Newsom promoted a special election that would create five new congressional districts in the state as a counter to Texas Republicans’ efforts to redistrict the state in favor of conservatives. Texas Democrats fled the state last week to prevent any measure from passing.
Officers stood nearby Nicole Maloney’s “OOMO Cube” (2014), where, ironically, members of the community had placed posters of individuals “disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” according to a museum spokesperson. Earlier this June, President Trump deployed the National Guard without Newsom’s consent in a move to quell protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles.